Dr. J. Griffith Davis gives as the result of her experiments in this direction, that when conception takes place three days before the menstrual period or within forty-eight hours afterward, the child will be a girl; when conception takes place ten days after the period, the child will be a boy.

Although there are a greater number of the female than the male sex in all parts of the world where reliable statistics have been taken, in all civilized countries the proportion of male births is greater than that of females.  There is a greater tendency of the male offspring to die earlier, and this is seen even before birth, in the proportion of three to two.  For this reason the stronger sex as applied to men has been regarded by some authors as a misnomer.  They are physically weaker in early life and succumb more readily to noxious influences.

The relative age of the parents is said to be another factor in determining the sex of the children.  Seniority on the father’s side gives an excess of male children; equality in the age of the parents gives a slight preponderance of females; seniority on the mother’s side gives an excess of females.  Men, and especially scholars, who pass a sedentary life and who exhaust their nervous force to a great extent, beget more girls than boys; so, also, a very advanced age on the part of the man diminishes the number of male offspring.

The Influence of the Male Sexual Element on the Female Organism.—­ Dr. Alexander Harvey, of Aberdeen, has adopted the theory of fetal inoculation.  He believes that the effect is first due to the influence of the male element upon the ovum, which, in consequence of the subsequent close attachment and freely inter-communicating blood-vessels between the modified embryo and the mother, inoculates the condition of the mother with the qualities of the male; and so, on the subsequent impregnation by another male, the offspring resembles the first male and not its real parent.  He even goes further, and says that it is conceivable, by successive impregnations effected by him, that the influence may be increased, and if so the younger children begotten by him, rather than the elder, might be expected, ceteris paribus, to bear their father’s image.  And as regards the mother, he suggests the question, whether there is not something in the popular notion that in the course of years the wife comes to resemble the husband; and that not merely in respect of temper, disposition, or habits of thought, but in bodily appearance, which may be referable to this influence exerted by the husband on her constitution, through the medium of the fetuses in utero.

  “Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
   What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay. 
   As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
   And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee
  down. 
   He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel
  force,
   Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”